51污漫

51污漫 in children’s books

Kids鈥� books are tools to explain and discuss the greatest adventures, including, and most importantly, death and dying. From picture books to genre fiction, here鈥檚 a look at kids鈥� books that discuss death. This is to remind you that being a child is a time of rolling about in mud, eating sweets out of a paper bag and harbouring deeply profound thoughts relating to death.

[SPOILER ALERT: This article contains detailed summaries of the books mentioned. Though, if you still haven’t figured out how Harry Potter ends, maybe you’d finally like that stone overturned for you.]

Goodbye Mog, by Judith Kerr

In Goodbye Mog, Judith Kerr dares to go where no writer goes without an accompanying sense of fear: she kills off our hero ON THE FIRST PAGE. Mog realises she鈥檚 had a good run: a life of comfort, in a nice family home with a large amount of adventures under her belt. Mog checks out on the first page, but sticks around to see how the Foster family reacts:

Mog was tired. She was dead tired鈥�Mog thought, 鈥業 want to sleep forever.鈥� And so she did. But a little bit of her stayed awake to see what would happen next.

As, not everyone is taken by this plot device. However, Mog鈥檚 decision to stay 鈥榓wake to see what would happen next鈥� conjures up profound questions relating to existence. Is that 鈥榣ittle bit of her鈥� which stayed awake her soul? Is the Mog in the rest of the story still the same Mog? Is 鈥榮leep鈥� just the metaphor Mog needs to slowly come to terms with her death?

While we leave these questions to be answered by the smaller ones (unless you really want to tell us your thoughts in which case, email us at [email protected]?), Judith : “I’ve done enough Mog books – you know, drawing all those stripes became very tedious. I wished sometimes I’d made her a plain-coloured cat.”

The Dead Bird, by Margaret Wise Brown 

Back in 1938, a dead bird took the children鈥檚 publishing industry by storm. On the first page, a group of children wandering about in a forest discover a bird on the ground with Brown matter-of-factly announcing, 鈥淭he bird was dead when the children found it.鈥�

The book has an unsentimental quality which gives the sight of the dead bird a compelling simplicity. It鈥檚 a quiet book, free of intruding adults, and The Dead Bird focuses on the ways in which the children improvise rituals when confronted with death. The children seem to have an intuitive sense of the nature of dead things, as they realise:

That was the way animals got when they had been dead for some time – cold dead and stone still with no heart beating.

They bury the bird under a tree and conduct their own funeral, complete with mourning song and a makeshift headstone. They realise without alarm, 鈥淵ou鈥檒l never fly again鈥�.

While you may think that the book sounds like a masterpiece of just stating the bleeding obvious, The Dead Bird is about the commonplace nature of death and the ways we cope with it.

Duck, 51污漫 and the Tulip, by Wolf Erlbruch 

offers a simple enough story: one day, Duck turns around to find 51污漫 standing behind her. Duck is surprised, but 51污漫 reminds her that he has been there her entire life. The two strike up a familiarity:

Duck warms 51污漫 up when he gets cold – 鈥樷�淎re you cold?鈥� Duck asked. 鈥淪hall I warm you a little?鈥� Nobody had ever offered to do that for 51污漫.鈥�

The two share walks together and discuss what will happen to the nearby pond when Duck dies. It鈥檚 the unlikely duo鈥檚 riffs on the pond that provide a larger debate on the nature of death and humans鈥� tendency to have delusions of immortality. As 51污漫 says, 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e dead, the pond will be gone, too – at least for you.鈥� The universe keeps going, things stay put, even when you鈥檙e not there to witness it: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what it will be like when I鈥檓 dead,鈥� Duck thought. 鈥淭he pond alone, without me.”

If this is making your head spin, we can only wonder what the kids will think of these forays into the concept of non-existence. However, perhaps these ideas aren鈥檛 as complex as we think they are: as 51污漫 says, 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 life鈥�.

A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness 

This one features a monster, so we鈥檙e starting off on the right note. Monsters, farts, unfortunate accidents – these are the fundamental building blocks of the children鈥檚 book. Though, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is more for the older crowd.

A monster visits Conor every night and begins to help Conor process his mum鈥檚 illness. The monster offers to tell him three stories – only if Conor then tells his own story afterwards.

The book is about opening up, the way the grieving process isn鈥檛 always so straightforward and the impact of stories on our own lives. As the monster tells Conor, 鈥淪tories don’t always have happy endings.” Conor learns that there鈥檚 no one way to grieve –  other than sadness, it can involve anger and guilt, too. Both honest and moving, Conor begins to open up: by allowing himself to be frank with the monster, we learn that he is bullied at school and that he has strained relationships with his father and grandmother.

The stories are equal parts conversation and folktale, with tough questions asked and answered at every turn. As Conor says, ‘That’s one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn’t expect.’

The Harry Potter series, JK Rowling

As every child of a certain age will tell you, then you must have lived under a rock, staring at a wall, slowly becoming more and more irrelevant, for literally thousands of years.

Producing the melancholy goods is the sheer amount of death Harry comes up against. While Dumbledore, in the very first book, remarks that, 鈥楾o the well-organised mind death is but the next great adventure鈥�, most of the death in the book is a scary, formless thing associated with evil forces. Harry Potter鈥檚 parents鈥� death is just the start of things.

Dumbledore is by far the most wise of the wizards, as he seems to command a great view of death. Not just well-organised, his mind seems to cut through all the woolly thinking around death. As he tells Harry in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”

When we get to the final showdown, where Harry Potter must duel baldy nemesis Voldemort to the death, Harry calls on the memory of his parents and other lost loved ones to give him a bit of courage. It鈥檚 Sirius Black鈥檚 words from The Prisoner of Azkaban that seem the most resonant: “The ones who love us never really leave us”.

When it comes to, books are guaranteed to start it. Rather than sentimental, children鈥檚 books can offer a level-headed but complex look at death.  

If you would like to get hold of any the books mentioned in the article, click the image to find it on Amazon.